#not knowing what lestat is thinking and feeling so interpreting him differently than lestat himself probably would)

[cuntylouis]

I feel like many people have a fundamental misconception of what unreliable narrator means. It's simply a narrative vehicle not a character flaw or a sign that the character is a bad person. There are also many different types of unreliable narrators in fiction. Being an unreliable narrator doesn't necessarily mean that the character is 'wrong', it definitely doesn't mean that they're wrong about everything even if some aspects in their story are inaccurate, and only some unreliable narrators actively and consciously lie. Stories that have unreliable narrators also tend to deal with perception and memory and they often don't even have one objective truth, just different versions. It reflects real life where we know human memory is highly unreliable and vague and people can interpret same events very differently

[chaotic-multi-fandom]

WHERE DOES IT START? ARUN, AMADEO, ARMAND

- My personal reflections on Armand's names in Interview with the Vampire (show version)

“Who am I Louis?” Armand asks while staring at a painting of a boy that only he would ever be able to recognize as himself. He stares at what is supposed to be his essence captured forever on a canvas, and yet the kneeling boy is a stranger to him. When he asks Louis this, he is earnest. Armand does not know who he is, and this lack of identity crushes and torments him. Armand seems to constantly define himself by his attachment to other people or things, such as a “servant”, as “the job (he) did not want” or as someone’s “companion” because he has never known anything else, he is never just “Armand;” he does not know who that is.

This is further reflected in his names, and the fact that despite having several none belong to him. First there’s Arun. This is supposedly the name he was born with, but even he is not sure of this due to his memory being clouded as a consequence all the horrors he suffered as a child. This name is not his, it is a name so linked to the abuse he endured that it has become the name of said abuse rather than the name of a person. His use of third person when talking about himself as “Arun” signals both a coping mechanism to distance himself from those experiences as well as the disconnect he feels from the identity attached to the name.

Then, there’s Amadeo. A name given to him by Marius, not only linking him directly with his maker and master but with God and worship, the name meaning “lover of god”. This name is also not his, but rather a projection of what Marius saw or expected in Armand. This is what we see in the painting, an ideal: a submissive, worshipful, whitewashed Armand degraded to kneel at the same level as the dog behind him, “basking in (his) worshipful mercy.” Regardless of how Armand did embody this role of worship and servitude during his time with Marius, that painting is not him, it is the fantasized construct that is Amadeo, who doesn’t really exist. When you think about it, Amadeo being a projection of those around him is not entirely different to “dreamstat” being a projection of Louis. This is of course largely my own interpretation and not fact, but I think anyone can agree that who is being portrayed in that painting is Armand only in name. It is simply another example of his body being used for a purpose, an artistic one in this case, his true essence and even features entirely forgotten and replaced by Amadeo’s. So, that name and the identity attached to it wasn’t entirely Armand’s either. Much like “Arun” being tied to his parents abandon and the brothel, Amadeo is trapped in the painting: just another property to be “sold” or “donated;” what Armand has always been treated as.

Finally, there is the name we call him by now: Armand. A name given to him by the Roman coven before sending him to the Paris coven, a collective that he is now supposed to lead and put before himself as an individual. It is a French name, a place he had no connection to before-hand and that only further distances him from who he might have once been, forcing him to adapt and assimilate into the new role he has been chained to. The name is a role in itself, as it means “soldier.” Furthermore, he is not a simple leader to this coven, he is the somewhat paternal and religious figure through which the coven; his “children,” serve Satan and through him, God. He is part of a “murky trinity” as Lestat calls it, a twisted parody of the holy trinity. So, “Armand” is once again much more than a name; it is another projection the lost and abandoned coven latches onto. Of course, they mostly refer to him as “maitre,” the implications of which I’ve already discussed in a different post. In this case, the dual titles “Armand” and “Maitre” are parallel to “Amadeo,” they both link Armand to the concepts of owner and God, except the roles change from being the owned worshiper to the worshiped owner. It remains someone else’s image, someone else’s name, one that prevents Armand from exploring who he is without it.

Armand does not have a name; how can he know who he is?

Even now he seeks the answer in Louis where he will not find it. There are, however, moments in which this seemed to be challenged. For example, shortly after meeting, Armand asks Louis to address him as such instead of “maitre” as his coven does. It is a moment in which he takes agency over what he wants to be called, a privilege he has never had before. Later, Louis calls him Arun as a way to indicate that he can see the person that lies behind the roles he plays, and that he can be himself around Louis. Yet these moments are still tainted. The name Armand does not reflect who he is, and in the conversation with Louis, Armand falls into his old patterns by addressing Louis as “maitre.” Plus, Louis too will go on to misuse this, but that’s a whole other topic. These instances, though revealing a more loving and honest side to Louis’ and Armand’s relationship in which they allow themselves to be open, they can not give Armand a sense of self. No one but himself can, and yet he doesn’t know how that is. It is a tragic never-ending paradox as immortal as he.

[nightcolorz]

Do you think Armand masks/is able to mask?

Amazing question!!!! I’ve made a post about this b4 a while ago (that I can’t find 💔) but Yes!!!! I think Armand is almost always masking. Lemme explain lol

Some autistic people mask by putting on a performance of conventional emotional reactions (such as making an effort to smile when they r happy bcus naturally they don’t make any expression when they r happy). without a mask these ppl may appear cold/mean/expressionless, etc regardless of how they r feeling, bcus expressing what is inside doesn’t come naturally. so in this case the mask is the effort of putting on the appearance of emotions so that their mood won’t be misinterpreted or demonized

Some autistic people r the complete opposite, and they mask by training their faces to be neutral/expressionless because when they r unmasked the way they express their emotions is so over the top and extreme that it is inappropriate + off putting (such as uncanny looking expressions that may appear childish or cartoonish, big emotional breakdowns, excessive crying, or even disproportionate shows of happiness that could be considered socially inappropriate). so to blend in these ppl try to stifle that by putting on a cold exterior, and mask by restricting how extreme their emotional reactions r to appear as smth more socially acceptable.

Armand is often interpreted as the first example, bcus he is often very expressionless, stilted, and cold, which when considering his autism makes ppl assume that he has the type of autism where outward expression of emotions dont come naturally to him, so he isn’t often expressive bcus of this. But!!! I think Armand more accurately aligns with the second example. Armand, when he isn’t masking, (as described in the books), expresses his emotions in extreme, over the top ways that are considered actually disturbing by other characters. In tvl Lestat says his rare genuine facial expressions look “horrific” and comedically absurd because of how much they warp his face, like a cartoon character. When Armand is upset and the mask breaks he has huge emotional meltdowns where he breaks things and harms himself + others and screams and cries, etc. So! By making himself appear cold, unfeeling, inexpressive, etc, Armand is masking!!! He trains his face and his behavior so that he keeps his naturally over expressive reactions at bay. Naturally, when unmasked, he expresses his emotions in huge ways that alienate him and are frightening/off putting to other people. In the books armands mask rarely slips, and when it does it’s shocking. Armand can go from inexpressive and blank faced to an exposed nerve of huge feeling in a second.

If Armand was always unmasking I believe he would act like a completely different character. But Armand is 99% of the time, always masking. Because of his trauma, and of course bcus he was never diagnosed or treated as if his autism was normal, he is conditioned to always mask out of self preservation. I don’t think Armand has ever tried to unmask, bcus I think he doesn’t see unmasking as a show of his real self. He probably sees unmasking as letting go of his self control and giving into childishness/madness. Armand has to be really pushed to his limits to let his mask slip, bcus he often considers his mask more of a part of himself than his genuine emotions. Armand doesn’t know who is he, and he tries to fill in this black hole where his sense of self would be by always preforming what he believes is needed/wanted from him. When he lets go of the performance, he can’t comprehend what’s there. And I think that rlly frightens him

thank u sm for the ask I love this question so much!!!!!! <3333 I wish I could find my original Armand masking post cuz it’s def better worded 😭 but unfortunately tumblrs search engine is incredibly broken

[nalyra-dreaming]

So, in that 2x04 argument transcription I'm debating Armand's "... and more and more of them.... they got through" as to whether that's in context of where Louis makes a jab about calling Lestat (as in, Armand making calls to Lestat when Louis was not around?), or if Armand is perhaps referencing Louis' buried memories. How are you interpreting that part?

A little bit of both is my gut feeling (if that transcript is, indeed, accurate).

Like... I do think it's mostly memories of Lestat coming through, of their time... and especially of what Louis is then suppressing - or what is suppressed for him.

Given 2x05 starts with a wholly different relationship scene it stands to reason imho that Armand "tinkered" again, after this. Buried the memories again, after.

Louis taunting Armand there is very interesting though. I mean, we see in 2x05 that Louis knew Armand called Lestat... several times. And if the transcript is correct then that thought is always on the back-burner of Louis' mind. But what Louis says there is the same thing that actually happens when he is talking to "Dreamstat" there - "Lestat" is hyping him up, coddling him, tells him what he wants/then needs to hear... and it makes me wonder if "Dreamstat" wasn't a LOT more present in Dubai, too. I mean, we see him later. But what if that is what Armand is actively suppressing there.

We saw Louis holding open the door for "Dreamstat" in Paris. He was talking to "thin air" as well, the hallucination of "Lestat" so real to him he probably talked "in reality" to him as well. Felt him.

Daniel's "Are you schizophrenic Louis?" was very much on point I think though I don't think it's a permanent actual mental illness for Louis.

It's more a... retreat, a representation of Louis' state of mind, a place that Armand can suppress the memories of, but cannot actually suppress, because "Dreamstat" comes from a place of longing and actual truth, from deep within Louis (source):.

“The thing that I love about Dream-stat is that it’s Louis’ idealized version. It’s the version of Lestat, or of their relationship that you never got to see really in Season 1. It’s the quieter side of their relationship,” Anderson explains. “They’re hanging out! They’re best friends. It’s a narcissistic version of that because he’s also a manifestation of Louis’ own feelings about things. But I think there is also quite a big element of friendship, companionship. It’s something that Louis missed. Lestat did see him. Lestat knows him probably better than anyone.”

I think that the jab, the accusation of "do you think I need to be hyped up", and the comments about Lestat and the memories all come from the same place, namely Armand not understanding that... Louis actually does want to be coddled. Hyped up. Cared for. Because... Louis wants his cigarette lit when he takes one. He wants support when he asks for it. He wants an honest opinion when he asks for it, or an emotional buffer when he needs that. He wants the money when he wants to buy the Fairplay Saloon. And so on. He wants to be cared for within his own agency.

(And Lestat often fulfilled his requests, even to turning Claudia, as we saw.)

But Louis does not want to be cared for the way Armand does it for the most part, which is actually taking his agency. Armand cares for Louis doing what he thinks best.

Armand literally "protects Louis from himself", which is something he states within the show. By taking the memories away, too. By tinkering with Louis' behavior. By putting whole phrases and words into Louis' mind.

I think what "breaks through" might be discrepancies. Things that don't fit. Louis is clever, he must notice. Daniel is a lifeline, that Louis needs to cast while keeping Armand "under control" ... somehow. Which is why he falls back into the power play there, imho.

Which is why "Rashid" happens at all I think.

Because, and I know I keep coming back to this scene, but this is Louis' face when Armand reveals himself in 1x07:

Yeah. Happy is something else. This is trepidation.

He knew it would get really difficult now (to break through). And he was right! Armand tried real hard to uphold the status quo - and almost succeeded, too.

[cuntylestat]

i just personally did not understand what Armand’s motivations were the whole time. Why did he let Louis leave so easily without using his powers, if the whole point is that he does monstrous things just to not be lonely? Did he ever love Louis or was he just trying to spite Lestat like Louis was? If the plan was to kill Louis why not just, like, do it afterwards anyway? He’s so much more powerful. Maybe these all have obvious answers and it’s just me

i don't have all the answers either, just my interpretations with what we know. i also think that we don't need to have all the answers yet and that some of this may be explored in s3.

i think by the time louis shoved armand into the wall he had already tried every desperate excuse he could think of and had to realize it was over, there was no going back. and i don't think armand is as much about blunt force as lestat is when he feels abandoned. his monstrosity lies more in his manipulations, his lies, than using his powers to physically control louis. even in san francisco, he punished louis by letting him suffer his injuries, by hurting daniel and threatening him with lestat, not by physically attacking or restraining louis himself. maybe, to some extent, he also wants the illusion that he's chosen. for example, when louis picks armand in front of lestat, he probably knows it's not really about him and louis really wanting him, but he's desperate enough to be loved that he can at least pretend. that's what he seems to come to with louis all the time; let's just pile all the hurt and the lies under the carpet, i'll do whatever i need to in order for you to be happy so you will stay with me.

i do think armand loved louis, just like he also loved lestat, just like louis and lestat loved each other. and yet they all hurt each other in different ways, it's just how these vampires work. we don't know yet if armand was actually planning to kill louis or if he was also gonna swoop in and save louis at some point - the trial works out differently in the book, so who knows, they may pick up on this later. i think, either way, once louis is still alive, armand sees a chance for them to maybe still work it out; maybe he knows his future with the coven is not sustainable after the trial and he doesn't want to be alone, or he really does regret his role in the trial and wants to be with louis after all. there are many options and maybe we'll get his story at some point

[adamnablelittledevil]

I'm excited for Devil's Minion but I hope the Lesmand aspect isn't undermined in its favor. That ship may not be endgame but it's so important to both Lestat and Armand.

I only know Devil's Minion content from what I've seen on the tag, but I share the same feeling! I also enjoy Armand and Daniel's dynamic on the show. I can't wait to see more if it (and any possible duo, romantic/endgame or not, because they're all so appealing) and I hope they did have something in the past as well (and I think it's highly possible), because both Eric and Luke are great. And, well, this chemistry is too extraordinary to ignore.

Sure, this scene wasn't a positive one, but tell me they don't have potential to deliver the romantic content?

So, about the books, I'm still on chapter 5 of The Vampire Lestat (I'm leaving IWTV for last), but so far I don't see how they could reduce lesmand. I guess you could say there is some romantic aspect to them, but there's so much more than that too. Now, I might be interpreting this wrong or things will naturally change over the course of the books, but I believe they have this soul ties/mirrors/foils/two sides of the same coin aspect. It's only been a little over one chapter since Armand was firstly introduced, but their dynamic already feels so important. They're so similar and yet so different, they're fascinated by each other, they see parts of themselves that they don't like on one another, they see things they can't understand but want to, there's empathy, there's protectiveness, they're attracted to one another and not even just in a physical/romantic sense, but there's some genuine curiosity, admiration and magnetism there, but they're still afraid of each other, they still despise one another, they hurt each other, they know it's better to stay way, but don't really want to so it challenges them to the point they also HATE each other... I even feel like it's more frustration and projection than actual hate, but still... They're very INTENSE, in every sense of the word. And it keeps fleeting all the time, sometimes it's warmer, sometimes it's more explosive, sometimes they have similar reactions to one another and sometimes they don't... Which leads to different types of tension that is entertaining to play with. Plus, they have the best conversations and arguments for me. They touch on some really relevant topics about each other's existence, their collective existence as a species and as individuals (which is part of their conflict). Basically, we can call them whatever we want, but they're never boring.

So I can't see them being able to change that even if they want to? Also, because Armand is the first vampire Lestat meets after his maker and fledgling. Magnus kills himself shortly after turning Lestat, Gabrielle and Lestat are almost on the same level when it comes to powers and knowledge about vampirism. Armand exists out of their sphere, has been a vampire for a while, has more abilities/knowledge than them... I feel like you need that in order to 'shake' things up on the flashbacks instead of just being in the bubble of Lestat and his fledglings or using Armand as a small character.

And Assad is one of the main actors, he's paid for main actor screen time, so it would be a waste not to use him as such? And, like you said, it's so important for both Armand's and Lestat's arcs, and this is a main character + main character dynamic, it's not like a side plot with a guest star. It would be killing multiple birds with one stone, because you'd find a way to use two fundamental characters, tell the story in a proper and also engaging way. Not to mention they would be insanely stupid to waste this.

Yeah, I know this is different on the book, but my point is that the enigmatic chemistry they're supposed to have is there and Rolin should make the most of it. Like, I'm still a bit frustrated they didn't play a little more with Jacob and Assad's chemistry too.

So let's not do it again? I mean, this is the first show I watch where everyone has amazing chemistry and good reasons to have lots of scenes together because they live forever and need to have more than just one company, lol. I say let's explore all of it, whether something is romantic/endgame or not.

Anyway, I believe we'll see a lot of Armand in the 1700s flashbacks and that lesmand will be top 2 of Armand's dynamics on season 3. Depending on what they want to do with armandiel, they might even explore more of lesmand next season, since that's 'Lestat's' season and they can have all future seasons for armandiel? I mean, I can see something kind of like season 2, when we had loumand, but dreamstat was still a significant presence and then the big scene at the end. Plus, I'm expecting Daniel to have a lot of screen time with Louis and Lestat, respectively.

Btw, sorry I deflected so much, I just had a lot to say, lmao. Thank you for the message. :)

[pynkhues]

https://x.com/snow_droplet/status/1836806686041944275

lots of people see this scene (louis reading madame bovary) as a one more confirmation of louis = housewife = mother. just as the yellow painting depicting mother and child. why do you think he relates to these works so much? and what do you think it says about writers' intent wrt his character?

Mm, I can see the thought process, but having read Madame Bovary a number of years ago, I'm a little surprised at the interpretation of Louis as Emma, who cheats because she finds monogomy boring, provincial life even more so, and dislikes motherhood - three things that I'd associate a lot more with Lestat than I would with Louis given a) Antoinette, and the fact that Louis never cheated on Lestat given he only had sex with Jonah when the relationship was opened up, b) Lestat spent most of his mortal life trying to escape the French countryside when Louis has only ever lived in cities, and c) his Whole Deal with Claudia.

I do think that it's worth noting too that the copy of Madame Bovary Louis' reading is actually Lestat's, not Louis':

It also shows I think a real sense of taking Louis' self-assessment when he's at one of his lowest points of depression across the course of the series, as an actual representation of himself? Claudia calling Louis a housewife was pretty specifically about trying to emasculate him into action, and we're sitting with Louis here where he does feel emasculated. Louis does find purpose through work - he's an ambitious man and a capitalist from the moment we meet him - and him being forced out of the upper echelon of earning capacity due to his race is both, of course, racist, but I think also is something he does find emasculating.

Louis always took his role as provider seriously with the du Lac's, I think both as eldest son and patriarch (and I kinda touched on it in my post about Grace, but the show flirts a little with gothic themes of a perverted family structure there in that Louis is both father and brother to Grace and Paul, and son and husband to Florence), and I think even having the illusion that he was providing for at least Claudia, if not Lestat (who of course is cashed-up from Magnus), was still a crucial part of his identity. It's why it's easy for him to fall into a (again, perverted) version of that role with Armand.

That's even without getting into the Capitalism of it all, haha. I actually forgot this and just caught it again on my (very slow) re-watch, but The Azaelia isn't Louis' only business at the time when it starts getting targeted. He's invested in, at the very least, grocery stores and millineries, which Lestat points out to him when Louis' making his No Whites Allowed sign:

This - - again - - is emasculating. Grocery stores and hat makers are very specifically pink-collar industries, and Louis' been making a fortune not off women's quote-unquote 'interests', he's been making it off women's bodies. And again, one day, I'm going to write my Louis-is-a-misogynyst post, but for now, my point is that it's the insult of this that fuels Louis' (rightful!) anger, not his relation to it.

The painting I do think is a bit different, but that's kind of harder to talk about given visual art is so subjective (and honestly I know less about it / can speak to it less). I do think it's significant though that the artist is a Black man, and someone who's still pretty up and coming. The maternal side there I can see, but I don't think it's as absolute as others, just personally.

[ca-suffit]

So, I'm the anon that asked the "how do you rationalize the violence?" question, btw. Thank you for your answer. I personally believe 2x07's version of the events is closer to the truth (I don't think there's a POV that 100% accurate, but I think that's as accurate as it gets about it), but that doesn't excuse Lestat's violence. Louis might have provoked him, but he had just seen Claudia being chocked and stepped in to defend her. I don't blame him for lack of a better word, 'exploding'. I think I would've done worse if I saw my niece, that isn't even my own child, in that situation. And yes, Lestat has gone through a lot of trauma in the books and the show, and people can argue how that and being turned into a vampire shaped his mind and have this aggressive side he might not be proud of, but it doesn't excuse anything. Because Lestat himself caused a lot of trauma in both Claudia's and Louis' lives. I do hope if the show is going with a loustat endgame (haven't read the books, but from what I've heard, they're canon), they're gonna have Lestat using his infinite lifetime to reflect on that, really earn Louis' forgiveness, be the kind of companion he deserves and never even consider doing it again. If it's possible to redeem him. I don't know if it is, but at least they have the "they have all the time in the world to do that" card. I do hope they try it, though, because making this behavior normalized and recurring would be terrible. I just don't know if it will be convincing and satisfying, but I'll wait I guess. I hope the same for Armand too and that they give him and Assad the grace of flashing out the character instead of demonizing him to make Lestat look better. I hope they also know he'll need and deserve more from the narrative than a half-assed apology, because there will definitely be some double standards about Lestat and Armand. There already are. But I struggle with some other stuff too. Because I love Louis, but he's not innocent either. I also don't believe in punitivism and I don't want to be reducing him and feeding into people that want to stereotype and demonize him, but... Claudia really is the only character that has always been inferior in terms of power imbalances in the dynamics of the show. At least among the main characters. If we consider killing people to feed then it's basically useless because they're vampires and not even the human is innocent because Daniel didn't worry about Malik being lunch. I do think it's a good thing for Louis' accountability that he feels regret and remorse for his worst actions, but I don't believe the fandom does the best job at discussing that. Many times it feels like babying the white character, reducing the characters of color into racial stereotypes of abusive, comparing them, ignoring what's convenient to prop their favorite etc. Like one is always traumatized, misunderstood, trustworthy, ashamed, trying to be better and the other is always wrong, unreliable, overdramatic etc. There doesn't seem to be a lot of nuance on people's interpretations and a safe space to discuss the differences of each moment and dynamic without accidentally feeding characters you love to the lions... Anyway, I'm rambling at this point, I don't even know what I was trying to ask lmao. But thanks for the attention and the previous answer.

(context) u can ramble all u want here tbh.

there *are* a lot of questions to explore and this fandom makes it v hard to do it. despite what the racist side would have u believe, ur not going to get attacked for exploring questions. ppl know whether someone's being intentionally racist or not when trying to talk about these characters.

the thing that the fandom isn't understanding (on purpose) is that having black and brown characters have these complex personalities u can explore is a rly good thing?! racists want u to believe that there's topics we can't talk about bcuz of stuff like saying ppl "need" louis to be "a victim," but all that rly says is "I don't want to have empathy for black ppl but I'm gonna say it another way and blame others for it." nobody here is saying louis, claudia, or armand is off limits to exploring, just don't be fucking racist about it! ppl would rather run off and say the fandom is full of bullies who will call u racist instead of...looking at their own biases? half the time nobody is even saying the word "racist," these ppl apply that shit to themselves in a panic. it'd be funny if it wasn't so harmful.

things to ask urself here are....what is ur definition of "redeemable"? where does that belief come from in the first place? a religion? society? both? what is ur own relationship with abuse and trauma? have u explored what codependency looks like in real relationships? do u understand all the emotions behind these things the characters are doing? why is louis feeling regret and remorse important to u?

I think a lot of confusion and anger over the DV is that ppl only know of one response to it and that's to leave forever. a lot of society is built on v black and white thinking with no emphasis on forgiveness or growth. ofc nobody has to interact with anyone they don't want to or "owes" anyone forgiveness or help to rehabilitate and all that, but it doesn't change that the person themselves is capable of growing and changing. we tend to have strict ideas of what "abuser" and "victim" look like and don't realize how quickly those identities can switch on the same people. a lot of abusive behavior is learned from trauma and traumatized ppl tend to form relationships with each other and act just like these vampires do. it's hard to place anyone in single categories bcuz it's a spectrum. this is humanity reflected at us thru vampires.

all of these vampires carry their specific trauma and triggers and are living in ages where none of this even has been put into words yet, plus they're vampires on top of it. their rules *are* different from ours to an extent and a lot of it is bcuz they're also a v small group who is immortal. imagine someone u rly hate for having harmed u badly in some way (mentally and/or physically) and then imagine u knowing ur gonna run into them or hear their thoughts for the rest of eternity. are u supposed to kill them? could u live with that for eternity too? what if they're stronger than u? what if they read ur mind first and kill u instead? it's a lot to forever think about. idk what the show is going to do, but I have faith it'll be satisfying bcuz of knowing AMC's history with writing about traumatized ppl. Television has gotten rly good at writing about abuse and trauma in v nuanced ways. ppl tend to shy away from it tho bcuz they're not ready to confront these things in their own life and so they find an excuse to say it's bad. the racist side cannot get over calling it "shock value" even tho all the violence (physical, emotional, sexual) has been treated with great respect to the audience and characters. u see the violence move thru the characters, affect them for years, and nothing shown of the violence itself is meant to feel cheap and "shocking." these ppl simply do not want to engage so they find a reason to justify why and this story will never make sense to them bcuz of it.

[dhampirdulac]

i understand that it can be frustrating when your preferred interpretation of a character isn't the popular take in fandom or when the show itself refutes it, but the reason "armand gaslit louis" is often "presented as an immutable fact of the show" is bc it's literally as close as we can get to an immutable fact of the show without having a word-of-god character turn to the screen and confirm it. "armand gaslit louis" isn't an attempt to villainize him or frame him as a machiavellian mastermind, it's a value-neutral description of his canon behavior toward louis for 74 out of 77 years of their companionship. it’s completely 100% valid to write whatever you want or explore alternate concepts in fic, but the meta here about armand's canon behavior is easily refuted by the show itself. taking it point by point:

1- “Armand engages in a lot more self-deception than he does conscious manipulation”

armand’s attempt at covering up the fact that he directed the trial is pretty literally 73 years of conscious manipulation- armand doesn't just "mischaracterize his role in the trial" by lying once to louis in 1949, it's a lie armand reinforces and embellishes up to the second louis learns the truth and rejects him in 2022. armand knows that louis wouldn't be in a romantic relationship with him if he knew armand directed his and claudia's lynching, and armand knows that any lingering trust or affection louis has for him is based on the false premises that armand had a passive role in the trial instead of actively directing it and that armand saved louis' life by controlling the audience. the foundation of their companionship after 1949 is armand deceiving louis- not armand deceiving himself. any warm feelings louis might have for him after that point is based on believing armand is someone he's not. to use this meta writer's own definition of gaslighting- "gaslighting is a pattern of behavior, and relies on small acts of denial...that make possible larger assertions of one reality over another"- we have proof positive of armand gaslighting louis about his involvement in the trial with the key memory of sam barclay. we know, in reality, sam was never guarding armand at the trial, confirmed by the real memory of lestat controlling the audience:

but when louis is talking about his memory of the trial in 2022, louis says he saw sam guarding armand:

whether louis thinks he "saw" sam bc armand literally altered his memory using the mind gift or whether armand just used human methods of gaslighting to make louis think he saw sam is up for debate ofc- but regardless of the specific method he used, armand was able to override louis' perception of objective reality to make louis' believe armand's "reality" that he was a captive under guard at the trial. that's textbook gaslighting- it's not ambiguous or up for interpretation.

the rest under the cut:

2- "Armand...believes he has no other alternative is the delivery of the line “I could not have prevented it” about Claudia’s death...he's reassuring himself that even if he made different choices the trial and its fallout were not preventable."

armand demonstrates multiple times in s2 that he's both willing and able to put members of the coven "back in their place" by force if necessary- he isn't a passive leader who's powerless to steer his coven's actions or even one who "believes" he's powerless bc of his traumatic background:

we also see what happens when the coven gives armand an ultimatum and armand doesn't agree with them. in s2ep3, the coven as a united front demands that armand kill louis- armand decides to spare louis' life instead- and the coven have no choice but to sit on their hands for over a year and a half. none of them even make an attempt at taking louis out 1-1 or ganging up on him under armand's nose bc they know the consequences of disobeying armand would be dire:

so why would armand- who can and will throw francis around for transparent attempts at conspiring against him, who flouts the coven's ultimatums depending on his own romantic desires- suddenly start to believe he's powerless to stop the coven or prevent louis and claudia's deaths only when it comes to the trial? esp bc we see armand say that "i could not prevent it" line in the context of several other deliberate, direct lies- not just "lies by omission"- meant to frame himself as another victim of the trial instead of one of its main perpetrators. he didn't just "expect" louis and claudia would be killed, he was one of the people attempting to kill them- and actually succeeded in claudia's case.

3- "I think there’s plenty of reason to think Louis might have indeed asked Armand to wipe his memories (of 1973)."

louis still keeps the rocks in his ankles from when he was buried alive during the trial but armand believes louis could have them removed any time he wanted, which is a great way of summing up their respective povs toward louis' trauma- louis has adopted claudia's "we keep the damage so we don't forget the damage" pov, while armand thinks he could just get rid of it (get over it) at any point. louis doesn't wanna move on, armand thinks he should've moved on already. armand's rhetoric when he says louis asked him to remove the memory- "you've no right to be (mad at me for erasing your memory), you asked me to do it"- also uses the textbook language of assault denial and victim-blaming- "she was asking for it"- bc it's an illustration of armand's in-universe gaslighting tactics.

4- "Firstly, it’s weird that Armand would have chosen only this memory to wipe, but left Louis with so many unflattering memories of him completely intact. Why not erase the trial, or at least Armand’s betrayal? Armand, in Louis’s Paris memories, fights with him, fucks up in front of him, all sorts of things...Why erase only this one memory?"

i feel like this is a misunderstanding of how abuse dynamics work-like, it's v rhetorically similar to saying "if lestat actually dropped louis from the sky, why didn't we see him beating louis a bunch of other times??" or claiming that lestat wasn't actually holding louis and claudia prisoner in s1ep6-s1ep7 bc louis and claudia were able to go out, run errands or hunt on their own without lestat's supervision. "abuse- gaslighting and psychological abuse in this case- has to be constantly happening in the most pervasive way possible or it probably didn't happen at all" is a fallacy that's often used to discredit victims- "it happened once" doesn't mean it didn't happen. and we don't actually know if there are other, more unpleasant memories of armand that armand could've suppressed or altered in louis' mind- like, we know for a fact that there are some unpleasant memories about him that armand kept out of claudia's diaries to "protect himself" and that he removed those without louis' input. plus- when louis starts remembering his attempt in 1973, louis realizes he's missing pieces of his life, plural, in a way that changed his understanding of himself. bc of the in-universe time crunch to uncover 1973 and the irl economy of storytelling, every single possible alteration or suppression isn't revisited by the show.

"establish something in-depth once and then let the audience make logical inferences about a pattern" is a basic narrative technique- if the show held the audience's hand thru every possible alteration in louis' memory and did a "real v fake" contrast every time, the story would grind to a halt and s2 would prob be like 10 episodes of nonstop memory examination. s2ep5 does enough to establish "armand is willing and able to mess with louis' memories and implant rote thoughts in his head and he's way more dangerous to both louis and daniel than he made himself look".

"5- If Armand’s goal is manipulating Louis (for what, I’m not even sure - just to stay in a relationship with him?)"

that's literally armand's main motive, at least after the tower scene- armand wants to keep louis with him bc he's lost everything else. we don't know all the context around the trial yet so things like armand freeing louis from the coffin, armand not interfering when louis took down the coven might get explored more in s3- but s2 establishes that armand is also terrified of vampire loneliness and cares more abt the security and certainty of a companionship than genuine love. after the trial, armand has no one but louis to cling to, and manipulating louis and exerting coercive control over him, to the point it starts affecting louis' sense of self- "i knew who i was without those pieces"- is how armand makes sure louis won't leave him. this is prob where armand's self-deception comes in- he prob tells himself that he's actually helping louis by easing his grief, that he's actually making louis happy etc. but armand's probable self-delusion doesn't make his material actions any less harmful or manipulative.

6- "(louis') instinct was to alter the details to make himself seem less culpable. He’s always struggling with this: how much of what happened is his fault? He’s afraid of the answer, because he feels responsible for it."

the scene where louis talks abt the "more accurate" version of claudia's turning cuts to armand looking like this as louis recovers his memories-

-and the explanation can't be "armand looks nervous whenever louis remembers anything more accurately bc it means louis could end up uncovering 1973" bc louis has already remembered two episodes ago. tv is a visual medium, so some information is conveyed visually thru images instead of direct text or dialogue- why would this be here if louis' issues with guilt and blame were the only things at fault with louis' memories, or the only reason his real memory of claudia's turning was suppressed?? expecting

7- "if you’re jumping on the “Armand is manipulating Louis” bandwagon please sit with yourself for a moment over why it’s that character that must be the manipulator. Why, in a show that takes great pains to have a full cast of flawed, realistic, imperfect characters, the one that is somehow irretrievably, Machiavellian-ly manipulative? What is it about him that inspires this reaction? 🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐 Maybe just sit with that question for a minute."

this last part of the meta is why i wanted to write out a reply after a fandom friend dm'ed me this post, bc it's framed like a gotcha- like anyone who reads armand is a gaslighter and a manipulator has some kinda unfair bias against him- but it doesn't hold water after s2, sorry. and i'm saying this as someone who vocally defended armand against the gaslighter allegations for the first half of s2. it's been six months since s2 ended, y'all- ppl see armand as manipulative bc he is manipulative, bc the climactic reveal of s2 is staked on the fact that armand directed the two black protagonists' lynching, lied abt it, then continued to deceive the unplanned survivor of that lynching while engaged in a romantic/sexual relationship with him founded on two major false premises. that's a factual descriptor of armand's actions in s2- and it's esp wild to try for a "gotcha" abt why so many fans see armand as manipulative in a meta post that attempts to hold louis, one of armand's victims, responsible for armand's behavior toward him after the trial. to be clear, this doesn't mean armand isn't a nuanced or complex character, that he's beyond sympathy or contrition, or that his trauma doesn't influence his motives and actions- it just means that gaslighting and manipulation are two of the main tools armand uses in his role as one of the antagonists of louis and claudia's story. it's like how lestat's main tools as an antagonist in s1 were brute force and direct physical violence- it's a description of their canon behavior, not a value judgment. and if folks have a problem with armand being portrayed as a manipulator and gaslighter bc he's a queer south asian man or bc they preferred armand's portrayal in the source material where he didn't continue to abuse louis after claudia's death, that's fine too- but that's a criticism to direct at the show and how it's adapting the source material, not at the audience who are just picking up what the show's putting down.

again, to be clear- i got no issue with whatever fanfic sparked this discussion, i haven't read it and don't plan to, and i def don't think abuse/gaslighting is a "necessary talking point" in all loumand fics. it's 100% valid to ship loumand, it's 100% valid to explore different reads of the show or alternate universes in a creative space, and it’s 100% valid if a canonverse fic set during the 1949-2022 era of louis/armand’s companionship has a premise where armand didn't gaslight or abuse louis. i consider that the same type of fic as canonverse louis/lestat aus where lestat never abused louis, never dropped him from the sky etc- it's a transformative way of engaging with canon, an au that reinterprets a canonically abusive relationship as one that isn't abusive. but downplaying the way armand harmed louis and repeating abuse apologist/victim-blaming rhetoric to try to exonerate armand from his canon behavior isn't necessary in any context.

tldr:

I hope it’s OK that I ask, how will your Loumand fic do the gaslighting stuffs ? Will there be a sad ending , or if it’s in a universe where Armand won’t do that so it has a happy ending !

Firstly, strictly in regards to the fanfic: we set out to write a fanfic that is earnest, optimistic, and invested in the importance of Louis and Armand's love for one another over the course of their long relationship. I don't know that I am able to categorize the ending, and overall tone, as sad or happy. It's a mixture.

Secondly, I don't want anyone to think it's not okay to ask stuff and I am thus choosing to assume the most good faith version of this question, where you really just want to know what's in store for the fic in regards to tone. However, I do want to say that waking up to this in my inbox bummed me out a lot. I think a friend put it well when I shared this and they agreed that it can read as "Will you address my specific headcanons in your fic? And if not, can I judge you for it?" There's a (probably unintended!) air of… policing how happy Louis/Armand fics are allowed to be and in what circumstances.

Thirdly, I'm going to hand it over to @marbleflan for a response to the idea of 'the gaslighting stuffs' being a necessary talking point to all Loumand fics:

Wow, ok buckle up yall this is gonna be long!

This is one of those asks that is just so hard to know where to begin. Let’s start with how Armand gaslighting is presented as an immutable fact of the show that we would have to rewrite or omit in order to write a story with a happy/optimistic ending. So first of all: what gaslighting?

Just as a reminder, gaslighting as a term comes from the film Gaslight and refers to subtle acts of denial of someone’s perceived reality in order to undermine their confidence in their own version of events. Crucially, gaslighting is a pattern of behavior, and relies on small acts of denial (in the film, the level of light thrown by the gas lamps, hence the title) that make possible larger assertions of one reality over another. So when and where exactly does Armand engage in this behavior? Point me to the places where this is happening because I haven’t seen it.

This kind of assertion that Armand is “gaslighting” or “manipulating” Louis is so pervasive in the fandom, to the point where it’s often presented as a fact of his character rather than one possible interpretation of his actions. My own interpretation is that Armand engages in a lot more self-deception than he does conscious manipulation: that is, when he lies to Louis, he really thinks he is justified by the circumstances, rather than misleading him for some ulterior purpose.

Armand lies to Louis canonically twice: 1) when he colludes with the cult to kidnap Louis and Claudia and put them on trial and 2) when he mischaracterizes his role in the trial as coerced and passive when in fact it was active. For me, the biggest factor in thinking Armand makes the choices he makes because he believes he has no other alternative is the delivery of the line “I could not have prevented it” about Claudia’s death. To me, this line is delivered not to Louis and not to Daniel, but to Armand himself—he’s reassuring himself that even if he made different choices the trial and its fallout were not preventable. 

Given Armand’s backstory, this kind of makes sense. Although he is the most powerful vampire in the coven, his experiences have taught him that being the most powerful will not save you: his maker, after all, was even more powerful and ancient and was burned alive by the Children of Darkness. And Lestat’s disruption of Armand’s rule over the CoD likewise showed him that a persuasive and charismatic leader can overturn centuries of indoctrination. It isn’t that he literally couldn’t have prevented it—it’s that he believes he couldn’t prevent it. 

The second lie, about the extent of his involvement, I think is really where there could be multiple interpretations. Why would he do this? My own take is that he does not go into the trial thinking Louis will survive. He fully expects that both Claudia and Louis will be killed and he’ll be left behind. Thus, he plays the role he always plays within the coven: artistic director. Later, after Lestat manages to intervene and transmute Louis’s sentence, he decides to free Louis. When Louis assumes Armand saved him at the trial, Armand doesn’t correct him and goes along with it, and the lie spirals from there. 

To me, I can completely see Armand justifying these lies of omission in a variety of ways. Sure, he didn’t save him at the trial, but he did save him later (by freeing him from the coffin). Sure, he did betray him, but he thought he didn’t have a choice. What’s the difference between feeling like you don’t have a choice and being physically restrained? And so on, and so forth. My point is not that Armand is blameless, or that he should be absolved of responsibility for his choices, but rather to point out that his actions aren’t fundamentally manipulative. They’re in character for someone who has survived a lot of abuse and violence, and whose priority is their own continued survival.

Now let’s talk about the San Francisco episode. Louis recovers his memories and is shaken, upset, and resentful that Armand took them; Armand claims Louis requested he remove them. Is he lying? The show doesn’t actually tell us! It’s completely left up to the audience to decide! Despite the near ubiquity of the opinion that Armand is lying here, I think there’s plenty of reason to think Louis might have indeed asked Armand to wipe his memories.

Firstly, it’s weird that Armand would have chosen only this memory to wipe, but left Louis with so many unflattering memories of him completely intact. Why not erase the trial, or at least Armand’s betrayal? Armand, in Louis’s Paris memories, fights with him, fucks up in front of him, all sorts of things. If Armand’s goal is manipulating Louis (for what, I’m not even sure - just to stay in a relationship with him?) why erase only this one memory? And moreover, why not erase Daniel altogether? Daniel stays with Louis and Armand for five days and then Armand says he erased Louis’s memories three days after that. Armand can erase eight days of memory but not eight and a half?

Secondly, although Daniel makes a huge deal out of their memories cutting off at the same moment, to me this is more of a flag for the opposite. In Louis’s own recovered memories, he is an active participant in erasing Daniel’s memory: in fact, it is practically his idea! Armand is ready to drain Daniel, wrap him in plastic, and yeet him into the nearest incinerator, and Louis is the one who demands he live. Louis is the one seen feeding Daniel his rote lines. Louis’s own rote lines, which emphasize Daniel’s importance, make more sense for him to have authored than Armand, who at that point is pretty much ready to kill Daniel and be done with it.

I also think it’s in character for Louis to have asked for it. Louis, in season one in the confession scene, says explicitly that his problem is avoidance: he runs to the bottle, etc. In fact that’s exactly what we see him doing in 1973, escapism via drugs and sex. Louis’s desire for the truth but instinct to misremember is central to his whole character. Hence the emotional freight of him telling Daniel that Lestat’s version of Claudia’s turning was more accurate, it’s him confronting how even as he tried to reveal the truth to Daniel his instinct was to alter the details to make himself seem less culpable. He’s always struggling with this: how much of what happened is his fault? He’s afraid of the answer, because he feels responsible for it. Additionally, Louis has trauma specifically around suicide, because of Paul’s death. So yeah; I can see him at a low point in 1973 saying “I can’t live with myself, I don’t want to remember this.”

This is just my interpretation, but it’s as valid as any other, because the show does not give us the answer. 

This is getting way too long and I have more to say BUT finally I’ll just ask that if you’re jumping on the “Armand is manipulating Louis” bandwagon please sit with yourself for a moment over why it’s that character that must be the manipulator. Why, in a show that takes great pains to have a full cast of flawed, realistic, imperfect characters, the one that is somehow irretrievably, Machiavellian-ly manipulative? What is it about him that inspires this reaction? 🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐 Maybe just sit with that question for a minute. 

-

THANK YOU @marbleflan for all that. I'm going to be honest: I don't really have the emotional energy for further discussion of this, which is why I'm grateful my friend was willing to share her thoughts. If you disagree with this, that's your prerogative! But I'm not going to be answering any asks that seem to be judging/policing/starting drama over a wrong interpretation of the character or ship.

[cuntylouis]

Yes, this is definitely just a personal theory I have from what we have seen so far, when/if they revisit things, we might learn more and my interpretation will be completely wrong, but for now, with what we know, this is kind of the only way I can come to terms with the changes regarding Armand (which is still difficult for me, since I am simply unable to accept any of the reasoning they have given when it comes to how Lestat was changed, but that's a different topic). And I agree with you, not being an active participant in his own life I think describes Armand very well. Which in turn makes it interesting when it comes to past DM if they go there, since that would be him doing something he actually wants to do and it also is intriguing when it comes to the future relationship between him and Louis (not even talking romantically, since I don't think the show will allow anything "not endgame" happen), because Louis' "bland beige pillow" commentary is, in that moment from Louis' pov accurate, but he does not know that it is a choice by Armand, and I would be interested to see how Louis sees him after learning that the Armand he knew is very different from who he actually is once he doesn't hold back anymore.

I recall Assad said he's interested to see what will happen now when Armand has nothing left and he wants to see him go full gremlin mode. Armand has always tried to built his identity and purpose and whole existence on something external and now he's been detached from everything and can't cling to anything anymore, and his old roles have lost their meaning so he needs to either build a new one or take off all the masks and reveal whatever is underneath. I think Armand is afraid of it too.

I keep going back and forth did something more than what we saw in 2.05 happen between Armand and Daniel in the past, but i think he'll definitely be going after him now. It fits the pattern of how Armand acts when faced with something that is cataclysmic to his identity; he joined the Children of Satan after they destroyed his family and old life, he became obsessed with Lestat and stayed in the theatre after Lestat caused the breakdown of the cult, he returned to Louis and made their relationship the center of his existence after Louis destroyed his coven and theater. Now from Armand's perspective Daniel has destroyed his relationship with Louis and his old life (even though Armand really did it himself) so it's not difficult to predict he'll become obsessed with Daniel.

Wrt Louis i think he has always known that Armand had a different side because Armand did show it sometimes and Louis could sense it even when he tried to hide it. That's what Louis was talking about when said 'there is it, the half-blank, half-apocalyptic look but what does it mean tonight' and is it the gremlin or the good nurse tonight'. Louis tried not to show it but i think there was always an undecurrent of fear in his feelings for Armand

[ashes-in-a-meadow]

okay so this is gonna have SPOILERS so yeah don’t read if you don’t want them also warning that this is lowkey long sorry abt that i just typed whatever came to mind🤷🏽

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okay so now that i’ve had a minute(and smoked some weed) i want to talk about lestat and what just clicked to me as the weed hit

okay so to start i want to make sure this is not read as apologizing or excusing what lestat did, i am simply explaining how i interpreted why he did what he did because this is not the time for lestat apologists to “uwu my baby didn’t mean it” this shit and if y’all do y’all weird asl…anyways on to my analysis(is that what this is??)

so my friend has said before she’s a very emotional person and when people hurt her feelings she’s said that she wants to physically hurt them the way they hurt her emotionally so they know how she feels and that immediately came to me as i was smoking and thought about how far lestat went when he was beating louis

to me it came off as, like my friend has said, he saw louis choosing claudia over him and then he desperately screams “louis!” and he lashed out on claudia for trying to take louis away, but then louis jumped on him and i think if we could’ve seen his face when it happened it would’ve been one of surprise and hurt that louis would do that right??

okay, so then he’s telling louis that he’s trying to hold back, but then he gives in and beats the shit out of him and idk it just came to as he was trying to hurt louis as much as he physically could to make louis feel like he felt emotionally

then when they flew up and lestat told louis to tell him that he’ll never love him and said that it would “make it easier”, he’s so used to people leaving him that he believes louis doesn’t love him and wants to hear it from his mouth so that he can “let him go” now do i think he would’ve actually killed louis?? nah, that man is down bad for louis, but do i think he would’ve let louis die?? yeah🤷🏽 he was so hurt and distraught that he would lose louis to claudia that he probably would’ve let it happen and then felt guilty about it later

also for everyone who thinks he doesn’t, louis does love lestat it’s fucking obvious but they don’t love the same way and that’s where the problem comes from between them, lestat fell in love with louis as soon as he met him but louis had been still learning to love lestat when claudia left and it doesn’t make it any better that they’re horrible at communicating their feelings with each other, louis doesn’t like being vulnerable and neither does lestat and they show it differently

louis will let himself get consumed by whatever is troubling him and lestat will try to do anything to ignore his problems, so basically a match made in hell cause they’re never going to learn how to love each other the right way if they don’t let themselves be vulnerable

also want to touch upon him and antoinette cause🤦🏽that mf never learns…i understand that he wanted sex or just non-sexual intimacy and he should’ve communicated that(ik his bitch ass would never) but cheating?? all of y’all that wanted to press “louis hooking up with jonah was worse cause he used to have feelings for him yadayadayada” can now pipe down and for the record it’s weird that y’all want to say what louis did was worse like lestat didn’t cheat on louis in his face in their house BEFORE proposing an open relationship🤦🏽 but whatever

and the trailer for the next ep?? they (i bet it was claudia tho) kicked lestat out😭😭 mf showing up with gifts😭bro ik that’s how you show you care but mf just COMMUNICATE AND APOLOGIZE PLEASE IM BEGGING THEM TO LEARN HOW TO FUCKING TALK TO EACH OTHER😭😭😭 *sighs* the whole ending of that ep was expected(i had got it spoiled a while ago) but at the same time it was a little more than what i was expecting but i understand the shock value part and the intention behind showing that not everything is rainbows and flowers for them(i mean it’s a vampire show where they kill people and has gore) just kinda wish that it didn’t leave me wanting someone to kill or beat the shit out of lestat😭

[moviegroovies]

okay so one of my points in the original incoherent longpost ramble i wrote while fending off the the post-lost boys haze that overtook me after watching it for, i believe, the fifth time, was that i thought the reason it was such a good movie was how quickly it checked the “oh, i like these characters and want to think about them now that the movie is over” box. in that post, i then proceeded to not talk about the thoughts i’ve actually been having about these characters at all, so let’s get down to work and try to fix that, shall we?

okay i was going to just write another impossible to read multiple paragraph long post, but y’know, how about i make things easier on all of us and do this in bullet points. so, in no particular order..... headcanons!

despite her later desire to get out of the gang, star wasn’t tricked or pressured into becoming a vampire like michael was. rather, she had been hanging around them for long enough that she pieced together what they were and asked to join, only coming to realize that it would mean killing other people for her own continued survival and wanting out later on.

in the 6-issue lost boys comic, it’s implied that star has cystic fibrosis, informing her decision to become a vampire. i’m definitely not taking all of that comic into my own personal canon, but i stand by that part--esp. bc it fits with vampirism being her decision, even if it was one she later regretted. 

marko is the smallest of the lost boys, but also the most dangerous, even exceeding david. have you seen that part where he’s peeling a man’s head like a fruit? that bitch is BLOODTHIRSTY.

not that he’s exactly an upstanding citizen on his own, but a good deal of the reason that david abuses exercises his control over the other boys is that he knows that they (but marko in particular) are always just about ten minutes and one show of weakness on his end away from staging a coup, and he knows that with anyone else in charge (save maybe dwayne, but dwayne isn’t interested in the leadership role) the group would become too violent and draw too much attention, getting them all killed.

okay now i feel like i’m vilifying marko which. i definitely stand by what i’ve said, but i also don’t think he’s like, pure evil or anything by any means. i like marko! 

i feel like i owe marko some nice headcanons now so like: i agree with the general consensus that marko cares for the pigeons in the vampire hotel, to the point where he feeds them and maybe talks to them. he DEFINITELY has named them all, although honestly he can’t tell them apart that well so usually when he sees one and calls it a specific name, he’s fucking with everyone else. loves to make fun of the other guys for not knowing which one is which, though.

one day he looks at a bird flying into the cave and casually announces “hey, vlad’s back,” and after hardly a glance, michael deadpans “vlad? that’s lestat.” 

marko goes into existential crisis mode for a week. this is the first time he starts to respect david’s decision to make michael one of them. 

he never figures out if michael was just fucking with him the way everyone else or if he could really tell the difference between the pigeons and it haunts him to this day.

ok wow that was a LOT of marko

back to star: she’s trans. you know that part on the boardwalk where she and michael are introducing themselves to one another for the first time, and michael goes “oh, your parents too, huh,” when she says her name is star? i always felt like she didn’t really get what he was saying, even after michael elaborated and told her he meant that her parents were ex-hippies. now i’m totally choosing to read that as her being like, a little offended that he thought someone would only be named star because they were burdened with it by uncool ex-hippie parents, because honestly when she picked it she thought she had the coolest name of all time. 

i will not take constructive criticism on that last part because it is already perfect.

on the subject of star, the general consensus i’ve seen in fic and stuff is that she had been a vampire for a few months or maybe a year before the events of the movie, but honestly i’d disagree.

personally, i feel like she’s been there for a lot longer than that--like, have you seen how she dresses? that immediately pinged “free spirit hippie girl” to me, which was kind of out of place, especially considering that everyone else dressed so 80′s. imo, star might have been turned as early as the start of the 70′s--making her the ex-hippie, and not her parents, like michael assumed. this fic here (which is SO good, by the way) explains the way that she was able to last a year with the hunger while michael was already struggling after about a week by having star steal sips from david’s bottle to tide her hunger when she could. that’s basically the way i see it, too, tbh, except over a longer time scale--rather than one year, something around 15. 

which means star is nearly as old as michael’s mother. oops.

alright, it’s weird, but i don’t actually think it’s that weird. the way i’m choosing to see vampirism in this universe is that it permanently halts the emotional maturity of the vampire at whatever age they get turned; david and the guys are nearly grown, at ages like, 18-22 or so, but not quite, and they’re never going to grow up and out of their immature mindset. the worst is for laddie, who’s permanently stunted around 8 years old. the others respond to this with a certain degree of pity, but since he doesn’t actually know what he’s missing, it mostly translates to a really rabid older brother/sister instinct. heaven help anyone who tries to pick on that kid--they’re immediately going to face 5 angry vampire dudes and one absolutely enraged vampire chick. 

(not to mention that his emotional immaturity means he’s got no real self control over the hunger he feels... if he ever snaps and becomes a full vampire, he’ll be the most dangerous of the group for a plethora of reasons)

on that note, if i were to list the lost boys by most control over their urges to least (or, y’know, least to most actively bloodthirsty), i think it’d be something like this: michael -> david -> star -> dwayne -> marko -> paul -> laddie, with the caveat that while marko is technically better at controlling himself than paul, paul has more moral reservations about the actual act of violent murder, while marko is more inclined to kill for fun. 

david being so high on that list may be a point of contention for some but tbh i feel pretty strongly about it

a majority of that call for me comes from the unmade screenplay for the lost boys: the beginning, a prequel to the film set in 1906. before reading that, i honestly had different headcanons entirely, and a lot less sympathy for david, but if you take the script as canon, i think a lot of things change about his characterization.

in the script, the four main lost boys are together (plus one other member named jasper, which is the only crossover name between the lost boys and twilight) as a petty gang before they became vampires. the start of the movie sees them pickpocketing to try and pay for a place to sleep that night, and david seems to luck out early, lifting a wallet with a $100 bill inside. 

however, when he realizes the guy has a family, including two babies, and he just took everything the guy has, he gives the wallet back, to marko’s intense dismay. 

basically, david starts out a criminal, and he definitely does care about self preservation above most other things, but he still has morals. later, when the movie’s big bad is pressuring him and the others to drink blood and live eternally, he’s the only one who refuses, spitting out the wine when he’s forced to drink it and showing the others that it’s blood. notably, even before that he’s warning his friends that they don’t have to drink it if they didn’t want to (mirroring the way that star told michael he didn’t have to drink of the bottle), protecting not just himself, but also them. he resists becoming a vampire the longest, too; david refuses to join the movie’s villain, even after the other lost boys have been turned, right up until he’s shot by some military men in a scuffle and it’s a matter of life and death. then, his self preservation wins out, but even once he’s been turned, david doesn’t lose who he used to be. 

tl; dr: i feel like david is a better person than the events of the movie alone would have you think.

in my opinion, he’s been looking out for his friends from the very beginning, and he’s never stopped doing that. yeah, even before he turned, he was a crook and kind of a burnout, but he had morals. i’m not going to deny that david enjoys being a vampire--enjoys drinking blood, the physical rush, the power over people who pushed him around--not by any means. i just think that comes from an understandable place, given that he was a streetrat who got pushed around a lot in the events of that script; he likes that he’ll never be a victim to assholes with knives who are bigger than he is again. 

plus, if you look at the people the lost boys kill over the course of the movie, they’re not exactly innocent victims. there’s the asshole cop who restrained david with a baton to his throat for pretty much just the act of putting his hand on a dude’s face, a jerkass who starts fights on boardwalks, steals comic books, and ignores his girlfriend’s protestations in the car when he’s trying to make out with her, the girlfriend, who stuck by him while all that shit was going down (and was reading one of the stolen comics, if i interpreted that scene correctly--not that this means she necessarily deserved to die, but she wasn’t innocent), and a bunch of assholes calling themselves surf nazis. david and his gang only go after people who have started the fight themselves in some way or another, and i think that david is a big part in keeping it that way--he’s the one who deescalates the tension on the carousel to keep things from an all out bloodbath, after all, and was the one keeping the gang in check since the turn of the century from doing anything too unforgivable for their own gain. that to me says he’s got a pretty good grasp of self control, and he keeps the gang to a level of violence that sustains their bloodlust without being totally gratuitous as much as possible.

re: his placement on the sliding scale of vampiric self control, you might be wondering why i put michael at the absolute top. honestly, it’s not that i think he’s a saint or anything. i just think he was the one member of the gang (jury’s out on laddie, but he’s automatically at the bottom because of his age and inability to control himself) who didn’t make a conscious choice, one way or another, to become a vampire. marko, dwayne, and paul gave into the temptation of the prequel’s big bad. david and star were given the choice between vampirism and death, and chose to live. michael, though--michael gave into peer pressure, but the worst crime he committed was drinking some wine. watching the others kill absolutely fucked him up, but he was able to resist any kind of bloodlust that might have had him joining in the slaughter on the beach that night. when pushed to the absolute wall by david in the ending of the movie (an ending you might have noticed i’m completely ignoring in favor of a full gang inc. laddie, star, and michael for my headcanons lol), his strength was tested against david’s and he won. michael isn’t perfect or superhuman, but he’s making the choices an essentially good, normal human being would make, and when everyone around him for one reason or another chose what they have, he’s got that tiny bit of a head’s up on them that makes all the difference. 

tbh tho, i think david was right when he said there was something of a killer in michael. i think on some gruesome level he’s kind of fascinated with the vampirism he’s fallen in with, which makes him more susceptible than, say, sam, or really any of the other emersons, who would rank above him on that scale, were they vampires too.

paul to me is just a fun happy dude. i was endeared to him when he clapped michael on the back after he drank and announced, totally earnestly, “you’re one of us!” i just, you know, liked his eagerness to welcome in a new friend. tbh i think he’s a bit of a ditzy airhead (or, dare i say it, a himbo), but he’s ultimately got his heart in the right place.

i really like dwayne. i like that he’s the quietest of the group (i saw a headcanon that said he didn’t speak that much because he’s got a stutter he’s embarrassed of, which i have absorbed into my canon), but i especially like that he does speak--to laddie, telling him what’s going on when he’s riding on the back of his bike. other than star, i think dwayne’s the most protective of him, and probably the most “maternal” of the guys. he’s under star in the sliding scale thing because to me he doesn’t really have qualms with killing assholes to survive, but at the same time, he’s never really tempted to take more than he needs, like marko is. 

i like the idea that dwayne’s really into music, like, ‘can name the artist, album, and song title of any song made since 1890 from the first line’ into music. immortality is a hell of a thing for music buffery. 

ok i have sooooooooo much more i want to say, i didn’t even realize i’d put together this many thoughts about this movie but Apparently I Have, holy god, but i need to cut off this post at some point sgfdshgh

one more fun marko one: totally love the hc that he paints, especially that he paints murals on the cave wall. artist boy.....

<3

[nalyra-dreaming]

i dont know if this is already asked, if so just ignore the ask! I love both Lestats from show and books. But I feel they have quite different personalities. Many times it feels like a very different character. Maybe its just me? I know in the books there is a big shift between the first book and the rest in that regard, but I think show Lestat doesnt match IWTV book nor the rest in terms of his personality.

I know a big part of it its because S01 and S02 is a distorted tale. And real Lestat will be different S03 forward. Thats not my concern. The question is, do you think Lestat personality will match book Lestat from now on? Will he feel like its the same impulsive funny naive child-like full of love brat prince ? Or are they creating another version of Lestat that is different from the books and also different from S01 and S02? ( In the sense, the POV will change sure, but it still not /quite/ like the books? )

I think Sam will make very sure we will get the ... let's say "correct" Lestat as soon as we get the real Lestat.

Remember, at SDCC 2024 he said that we had NOT seen the real Lestat yet.

But... nonny, forgive me, but Lestat isn't "funny naive child-like full of love" throughout the chronicles??

He battles severe depression and body dysmorphia, fights for his agency, often, reframes the abuse he experiences as love. He tries to convince himself he's evil because his existence just does not make sense, the guilt is eating him alive, he hides his pain behind a deliberately superficial behavior pattern at times. He is impulsive, yes, but naive? Hardly. He loves, deeply, defiantly, but he has PTSD from his turning up to the last books. Throughout the chronicles he fights what happened to him, namely that he was

"Chosen for his looks, raped into darkness, abandoned right after, forever and desperately trying to get past that superficial and harrowing judgement."

I'm putting this into quotation marks, because I said this before, 1,5 years ago. He was chosen for his looks, and the event he himself calls the "cosmic error".

I don't know which books you've read, or which circles of mutuals you are in.

I know the fandom likes to joke about how dumb Lestat acts at times, or his (supposed) illiteracy... As someone who was kept from knowledge myself and had to fight to get to it I find that hardly funny, especially since Lestat is actually highly clever and reads a lot, and can also speak a lot of languages. Oh, and of course he is the author of most of the VC 💀 And I don't find his wildly flailing depression-fueled actions dumb either.

But I guess that is a matter of taste and interpretation.

(I'm not saying that you think that, I'm just saying I do not.)

Lestat is a brat (at times, and I mean, that title was given by Marius, right), and he is capricious, and full of love, yes. He is also full of pain, and guilt, and battling it constantly. And hiding it constantly, too.

That is why I keep saying that I am thankful for Anne for writing those last three books.

Because at the end, in Blood Communion - they (not only Lestat) do find some peace and acceptance. And themselves.

As for the show, as said at the start - I trust Sam to deliver Lestat, even more than I trust Rolin etc to write him. See the monologue in episode 6, for example, where he made sure of it being clear he was forced. Etc.

He will give us "Lestat".

I'm not sure it will be the one you will be expecting?^^

But that will remain to be seen/shown.

[i-want-my-iwtv]

Speaking to the connotations of race, it's interesting that people in the fandom want to make Daniel the black character when for so many years, a goodly bulk of this fandom has only attributive Daniel as having any value to the story when he's attached to Armand, or made him the butt of crazy jokes. It seems awfully suspicious to me that the "best' character" to be cast as a POC is the one so many have considered the throw-away one. If that doesn't speak volumes, I don't know what does.

Race. *sigh* I keep revisiting this ask, and each time I do I feel more and more like I don’t want to engage as there are so many landmines. 

I didn’t get into fandom for landmines, and so I maneuver around them, and the reason I’m answering this at all is for those who are thinking about topics like these but are too afraid to respond for fear of the landmines.

I’m responding bc I feel like if sharing my perspective could make just one person feel better about this, then it’s worth the risk and worth my time and effort.

THAT SAID, I’m not sure which post you’re referring to, Anon, but there was one a few weeks ago in which another Anon asked/said:

I’m up for Daniel being Black in the adaptation. His race isn’t mentioned specifically in the books, and we need diversity in an ocean of white Eurotrash fops! I don’t see any reason why not and Bryan cast the lead in American Gods as black so I’m hopeful to see some good changes in Anne’s work. What do you think?

^Here’s one person who wants to cast Daniel as POC/Black, and they seemed to be accentuating the positive. They want diversity. They compared him to the lead from American Gods being cast as black. I don’t watch that show so I don’t know if that character is the “butt of crazy jokes” or only has value being attached to another character, but it seems to me, at face value, that this Anon thinks that Daniel being cast as POC/Black is parallel with the lead of another series being cast as POC/Black, this Anon states that as being a good change.

I answered that Anon more in depth with some historical context, so you can look at that response, but basically, Anne is open to casting POC for VC characters. I’m open to it! I trust in whoever is running the adaptation to produce it in a tasteful and respectful way, and updating it to be inspiring and satisfying to a wider audience would be great, however that happens. 

TL:DR;  I think people do care about Daniel, and would love to see a character that they care about, like Daniel, be cast as a POC as a good thing. Daniel is not perfect (none of them are! Except Mojo) but he has many positive traits: he’s clever, resourceful, sassy, charismatic, capable of loving and being loved in return. I think people would love for the adaptation to show that those traits can absolutely be found in POC, too. We do need more positive representation like that.

Reminder that this is a fandom blog for entertainment and I am not here to make/agree/disagree with political statements that are potentially inflammatory. Not my focus. But I will address your points to some extent.

Speaking to the connotations of race, it’s interesting that people in the fandom want to make Daniel the black character 

I haven’t seen an enormous amount of people in the fandom wanting this change, I think one blog is dedicated to it? I’ve mostly seen interest and support for casting a POC as Akasha, since that casting in movie!QOTD was pretty widely praised. I see people talking about considering casting other characters as POC, but I don’t see anyone other than Akasha as being the main character of interest for that. 

One could criticize that choice as being bad, as it could imply that POC/Black women are villains, bc she was a villain in that movie. That’s not the message I took from that casting choice, but one could easily argue that that was a message being sent (and therefore, Bad representation, even though she was cast as a character in a position of power).

when for so many years, a goodly bulk of this fandom has only attributive Daniel as having any value to the story when he’s attached to Armand, or made him the butt of crazy jokes. 

“for so many years” covers decades of time, these books have been around since 1976. Reflecting back to when I started in this in 1993 (which was already almost 20 yrs late), I can’t say that any character has escaped being the butt of crazy jokes in all this time, and with the nature of shipping, many of the characters seem to only have value when attached to other characters. 

Re: shipping: it seems like ships are more prevalent in fanworks than fanworks portraying the characters on their own, and so it may give the impression that fandom “prefers the characters as part of a ship,” but personally, I think of shipping as the collision of 2 (or more) characters, to see how they’ll interact: in happiness, sadness, anger, all the different ways! Writing about a ship can allow a fanartist/writer/etc. to explore how each member of the ship will react in actions/words/etc.to the other’s actions/words/etc. So I can see how you might get the impression that “Daniel only has value as being attached to Armand,” but I think it’s more about how Daniel presents himself when he is with Armand, that’s what the fanworks are exploring.

Along those lines, however you interpret that ship, the bulk of Daniel’s post-IWTV “screentime” was in QOTD, with Armand, and after that, Daniel doesn’t get much action in canon until the more recent books (but even then, not as much as in QOTD). As the fandom does tend to ship Daniel with Armand, and plenty of it that I’ve seen (especially in fanart) is somewhat fluffy, again, I can see why you might get the impression that “he’s only valued when attached to Armand,” but really, I think Daniel/Armand shippers are fascinated with the dynamic of that ship. It’s rarely fluffy in canon. So some of them make fanworks for wish fulfillment, and that’s valid. 

Personally, I don’t think Daniel’s only value to the story is when he’s attached to Armand, but again, he spends most of his time in canon with Armand, maybe that’s why the fandom doesn’t tend to write him on his own time separately. 

Re: being the “butt of crazy jokes”: As a side note, when we joke about characters, that’s not to say that that’s always a negative act. Look, we’re currently dragging Lestat bc he said IN CANON that he loved being called a “slut,” which is really more of a layered commentary on shaming people for enjoying sex/intimacy, and he refuses to be shamed for it, he’ll turn around and take it as a compliment instead ;)

I’ve been in this fandom for over 20 years and I don’t think Daniel has gotten the worst treatment in those terms, it seems to me that there have been waves of love/interest/disdain/mockery of most of the main (and side) characters at different points in time, and from different groups of fans. So that may be your experience, and that’s absolutely valid, but I haven’t seen it that way. Of all the characters, I think Lestat probably gets the worst of being the butt of crazy jokes and he likes it bc bad attention is better than no attention.

It seems awfully suspicious to me that the “best’ character” to be cast as a POC is the one so many have considered the throw-away one. If that doesn’t speak volumes, I don’t know what does.

I’m sorry, but I have to disagree here, too. I wouldn’t say he’s a throw-away character for the whole fandom. There are Daniel RPers. As I’ve mentioned, it happens that he doesn’t have a lot of action in canon other than in books 1 (as just the interviewer, but it counts!) and 3, so the fandom does not have as much canon to work with as they do for other characters.

And again, re: the fandom choosing him as “the best character” to be cast as a POC, that seems to be Akasha, from what I’ve seen. 

Relevant to this discussion: there was a wave of love for Nicolas a few years back, for the same reasons, I think, that  @mendedpixie7 felt about Adam in Only Lovers Left Alive:

The reason I love Only Lovers Left Alive is it shows that a character (Adam) can be severely mentally ill, in this case depressed and suicidal, and still be seen as lovable and capable of being loved and loving in return without being “cured” of their mental illness, and that a mentally ill character can have other attributes aside from being mentally ill while still showing the impact being mentally ill has on his personality.

Adam from OLLA is an extremely important character to me you guys.

Similarly, I think people would love to see a character that they care about, like Daniel, be cast as a POC as being POC is often portrayed negatively in media. Fans of a POC being cast as Daniel would want (I’m paraphrasing from above): 

to see Danielshowing that a character can be POC, in this case black, and still be seen as lovable and capable of being loved and loving in return, and that a POC character can have other attributes aside from being POC while still showing the impact being POC has on his personality. 

Daniel Molloy from VC is an extremely important character to me you guys.

[5thinvictus]

The Strain 4x05: A Write Up

Disclaimer:  The point of this is not to belittle or undermine anyone else’s interpretation or headcanon of the episode.  The point of this is simply to get it off my chest.  This is in no way an attack or a troll.  It’s simply what I do after episodes, I just normally attach it with GIFs.

As MANY people in this fandom already know ... I’ve never been a Tasa shipper, but I accepted the relationship as a part of Quinlan’s life which allowed him to grow and feel.

I admit, full-heartedly, that The Strain is no longer a good TV show, but until now it was a HELL of a guilty pleasure. I watched it despite some part of myself understanding that it was bad, because I dug some of the characters and actors. I spent a LOT OF TIME pushing the show and creating content for it. I even spent nearly all of my time at SDCC doing so, knowing it wasn’t critically acclaimed or anything. However, this past episode wasn’t a guilty pleasure. This past episode, the creators actually insulted my intelligence a bit.

From the truck action (there were a few cool bits, but i.e. Quinlan falling to the truck for SEVERAL seconds, as the strigoi looks CONFUSED at him before getting cut in half. The wire was REALLY high up. It would have been so much cooler if Q had ducked under it at the perfect time) to the flashbacks to the unnecessary meandering dialogue/romance with Eph and his new lady friend (did we need that scene at all? There are only 5 episodes left and … what was the point of it all?), to Eph just letting that woman go to become the Master and know his location ... the writing and direction in this episode was scattered all over the place.  ಠ_ಠ

I could likely go on for pages about the rest of the episode, but I’m not going to rant about anything in this post except the flashbacks and their personal impact on me.

Quinlan: out of Character? Perhaps ... Perhaps not.

The Strain is a bit notorious for not being able to keep any of their own characters straight. I think this might be because of the wide range of writers and I know this happens on TV shows because of that fact, but they flip-flop back in forth for everyone, with the only exceptions being Abraham and possibly Mr. Quinlan. Until now.

The flashbacks.

Very simply put, I would have accepted this all better if he was younger. That’s the crux of my problem with it. Not Louisa. Not that Louisa isn’t Tasa. Not that they’ve, once again, changed canon. I’ve read some arguments for this behavior that conjecture he was just "curious" and he had talked about being “curious” in Rome two thousand years prior. But that was when he was very young. If you follow the canon timeline, he was in his late teens or early 20s in that scene.

That was when he was STILL trying to figure out humans. In this scene, he is 1848 years old (1888 A.D. - 40 A.D.). Take a moment to fathom that number. 1848 years old. If human’s average lifespan is around 70 … that is a little more than 26 lifetimes. At this point in the story, he has lived 26 lifetimes. He has traveled the world, leading the life of a demigod undead hunter, integrating with societies all over. He was a gladiator, which meant he was likely used for sexual purposes. He would not be as curious as a schoolboy, or confused by a woman painting his face. Makeup is not a new invention. Over 1848 years, it’s ludicrous to think that he hasn’t TRIED to paint the strigoi out of himself before.

What I find the most hard to swallow about this scene is not that they replaced Tasa with Louisa or that they gave him a woman at all. I don’t care either way. It is that he acted like a child for most of the flashback. When the little girl ran in and met him, he acted like he’d never met a child before … Wait what?

So, if they had done this "love story" in Rome or sometime around that part of his past, I would have actually bought into it, because he was still on his first lifetime and he was still trusting, and curious, and childish, and … naive.

This leads me back to my headcanon about it. Louisa and her daughter remind him of Tasa and Sura, so he bought into the "romance," or the “idea” of it. He’s been alone for a long time and he’s grown tired and this woman pops out of nowhere and offers him a chance to revisit what he had lost so long ago, then maybe he would be more open to … moving in with her after a couple of days / weeks? (I agree with @theforgottensheikah on this. I fully understand they are rushed, but some kind of montage would have made it seem like more time had passed? The quickness was terribly OoC).

Expectation vs. Execution: The scene itself

Intimacy + Bonding vs. Strange Stinger Kink + Porno Moans

IMHO, this was weird. He’s feeding on her. There’s no kiss, there’s no intimacy, there’s no bonding.

They could have made that scene very sexy and made the audience feel the emotion that was supposedly there (even with the unbelievable Quinlan makeup) by having something like:

Forehead or nose touches (I fucking love these, sorry).

Quinlan refusing at first, telling her he didn’t want to hurt her, expressing concern for her.

Kissing … good lord, some kind of kissing.

Twitching and rattling with excitement over just the possibility of touching her.

I’m not daft or a fool. I get what they were trying to convey, but it fell flat. I’m not a crazy fangirl because I was more than open to see this. I DIDN’T MISS THE POINT AT ALL. But I wanted to see some intimacy. I wanted to see how Rupert would convey that intimacy. I was excited to possibly see Quinlan kissing someone.

IT … FELL … FLAT and then they made it weird.

He drinks her. Hmmm. To him, humans are food. To him, humans have always been food. 1848 years of food food food. I get that she’s got the kink and he conforms to it, but that’s not his kink He does what she asks but I’ve never been a huge vampire/blood play fan because … You like a good steak, but that doesn’t mean you want to fuck the cow, and if you are fucking the cow, doesn’t mean you are eating them at the same time. This disappointed me because it’s an incredibly clichéd vampire trope and I would hope that someone like Quinlan would be beyond it, especially at his age.

Also, I want to point out something particularly poignant here. Given how he reacted to the Master reminding him of Ancharia in 2x07, her death is still very much an open wound. So, I would think that being encouraged to drink from Louisa would be uncomfortable for him, to say the least. Since the Master forced him to drink the last known human that he cared for to survive, this scenario should actually be quite traumatic to him.

And, why would he want to drink someone he loves, especially after she just told him he was more beautiful as a human than a strigoi?  Isn’t that confusing?  She just painted him up like a human and then told him to drink her like a strigoi.  I digress ...

When I watched this part of the episode, I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t even cringing. When I watched this part of the episode, I started laughing. This is no exaggeration. Even my husband asked me what I was ‘cackling’ about because these flashbacks played as if I was watching them re-enact a bad fanfiction. After it was over, I was more embarrassed and a bit creeped out about being a fan than angry or even disappointed.

What ran through my head was:

Oh good god. Is this what the show runners think of us?

Someone who accepts him in all of his unique beauty vs. Someone who tells him he needs to be human to be beautiful

I don’t need to touch on this subject as many already have. Instead, I’ll let Guillermo del Toro speak for all of us:

Well, I have said this in the past, so I hope i don’t bore you by repeating it, but I think that we live or die under the tyranny of perfection. Socially, we are pushed towards being perfect. Physically, beautiful to conform to standards that are cruel and uncommon, to behave and lead our lives in a certain way, to demonstrate to the world that we are happy and healthy and all full of sunshine. We are told to always smile and never sweat, by multiple commercials of shampoo or beer.

And I feel that the most achievable goal of our lives is to have the freedom that imperfection gives us.

And there is no better patron saint of imperfection than a monster.

We will try really hard to be angels, but I think that a balanced, sane life is to accept the monstrosity in ourselves and others as part of what being human is. Imperfection, the acceptance of imperfection, leads to tolerance and liberates us from social models that I find horrible and oppressive.

— Guillermo del Toro, on why he has always been intrigued by monsters

Passive vs. Submissive vs. Dominant

Quinlan was uncharacteristically passive in this episode. HE WAS THE SEXY LAMP THIS TIME. From Ancharia to Rome to modern day, he’s never been this passive. Even when he was working with Abe, he was still contributing and arguing.

This breaks the continuity of his characterization.

Aside

For those comparing him to Dracula AND/OR Lestat and using that as a basis for belittling others into loving what they saw: I didn’t pick Mr. Quinlan because he reminded me of other critically acclaimed vampires.  I picked Mr. Quinlan as my favorite fictional character because he was uniquely interesting and beautiful.

I chose him because of how intriguing and new he looked, how he acted and how Mr. Penry-Jones portrayed him.  I picked him because he was different than any other vampire/dhampir/nephilim I had ever seen.  Comparing what they did to him with other vampires, regardless of how I feel about those other character, actually cheapens his uniqueness for me.

Also, Gary Oldman was a shapeshifter in that movie and thus, it was well within my suspension of disbelief that he could change the contours of his face to look entirely human.

Now ... Understanding Your Fanbase

Part of the reason I, and many more fans, like the character of Quinlan is because he doesn’t conform to modern beauty standards. I loved that he wasn’t your average handsome, makeup-laden (cough - Twilight) vampire hunk. I loved that he was unique and complex. They took one of the most important aspects of his character and they wanted us to buy into a rushed and botched romance with a woman who wanted to fundamentally change him. Tasa fan or not, it’s very clear why this bothered people.

Would you and SHOULD YOU be with someone who convinced you that you needed to get plastic surgery?  I guess, since this is made by ‘Hollywood’, then this is an acceptable thing in that space?

In Conclusion: 4x05

No, we did not miss the point. No, we aren’t being stupid fangirls who don’t want to share Quinlan. The fact is, we just aren’t that gullible. Many of the people in this fandom have written their own fics, whether it be explicit or not, whether it be with an original character or Tasa or another canon character.

An impressive amount of us have actually sat down and put pen to paper in an attempt to characterize Quinlan. This is a difficult thing to do, because we like to think that he’s incredibly complex and mysterious. But, everyone is free to have their own interpretation of him.

Mini rant: Why does The Strain always make their female characters so sexually aggressive?  From Nora ripping Eph’s clothes off in the middle of an episode, to Anya being the one to invite Gus into her warm bosom, to Dutch VERY AGGRESSIVELY seducing both Fet and Eph, to Louisa begging for it?  Is this really the only type of woman that exist in this world?

In Further Conclusion: Quinlan and The Strain Fandom

I’ve never been a superfan of anything in my life and, while it has been a phenomenally creative outlet, the toxicity and ugliness of the current fandom makes me realize that I’ve got to get back to being an adult now. At the end of the day, it’s just any old terrible TV show and they’ve decided to remove the one thing that was inspiring me to continue watching and the bragging that it’s only going to get worse only tires me more.

It’s absolutely no secret that if the Strain didn’t have Quinlan in it, I would have stopped watching it halfway through season 3. It was all over the place, from the plot holes, strange character direction, and … of course … the treatment of women.

On that note, allow me a tiny tangent.  Something has seemed significantly off about the Strain since it came back together to film Season 4. Speculation on the cause of this tepidness shown from the creators, crew, and actors has driven mad speculation throughout the remaining members of the dwindling fandom.

What was going on that no one wanted to say anything? Was it that good that they didn’t want to spoil anything or … was it that bad that people are actually embarrassed about their contractual involvement? Why wasn’t the cast promoting it very much anymore? Why wasn’t the social media team themselves promoting it very much? Why weren’t there any teasers or anything to drive anticipation. And … most importantly … where the fuck did Guillermo del Toro go?!?

While we’re desperate to know why everything seemingly fizzled out, as just ‘simple fans’ who’s opinions don’t matter, we will never be privy to such information. If anyone has any insight into this and they’d like to share with me as a parting gift, please do so. It would be a private conversation.

I’ve been putting far too much passion into promoting and generating content for this show and after the atrocity that was the last episode (and the manner in which people reacted to criticism of the episode), I’ll be taking an indefinite hiatus from further involvement in this fandom. (Indefinite: lasting for an unknown or unstated length of time.) After all, I’m just a ‘simple fan’, and the only way that I can really show my disdain for the misdirection is by boycotting further direct involvement in the fandom.

WAIT! WAIT! WHAT ABOUT THE GODDAMN FIC!?!

。゜゜(´Ｏ｀)°゜。

I do not regret the time I’ve put into this as it gave me the confidence to reach beyond what I thought I was capable of and it drove me to start writing finally. I don’t even regret that the Strain was terrible in Season 3, because the best fanfic actually comes out of terrible shows (for obvious reasons). And regardless of what happens next in the show (which I am politely declining to watch further), no one can EVER take away the headcanon that I’ve created for myself and my version of Quinlan. Overall, I am incredibly proud of the characters that I built and the fandom that I have for my own interpretation.

With that being said, the latest episode was amazingly uninspiring and it kinda murdered my muse a bit. I will see what I can do about that. I promise. And if there is enough interest in me continuing it, I will.

Now, my fierce and lovely fandom … prepare yourselves for one final and epic commission for Straining for Originality. I’d wanted to wait until the chapter, but fuck it all …

Gif by @quintustheinvictus

[bamboozy]

I think we are just interpreting the terms "hero" and "villain" in different ways. To me, they aren't moral judgements at all. Like I said, I am talking about narrative framing. You can call them protagonist and antagonists, if you want, but every story has them. Every story has a narrative with characters that we are meant to like and dislike. We may come away disagreeing with the narrative, but it needs to be there.

While everyone is morally gray in the series, we are definitely supposed to sympathize with some characters more than others. When I think of the term hero, I'm thinking about who the author wants us to like the most. Who are we supposed to root for?

Lestat was Anne Rice's Mary Sue, we are supposed to love him, flaws and all, the way she loved him. She thought he was super cool and awesome and she wanted her audience to feel that way too. Many people did and still do, obviously. He has a tendency to actively call himself out ("I don't know if i'm the hero or villian of this tale, but either way, shouldn't i dominate it"), which makes it easier to accept him as the hero because the narrative is saying, "yes he's a mess, but love him anyway."

So while I agree that Marius's bad behavior is obvious, to a degree, I don't feel like the narrative frames it particularly well. He doesn't get called out in ways that feel satisfying.

I admit there's a reason I feel this way.

When I first read these books as a teen, Marius was one of my favorite characters. Second favorite after Louis, actually. I admit, I was not inclined to think critically about things at that age. I was just accepting what I saw on the page, and Lestat (the character we are supposed to like the most) thought Marius was cool and so did I. The long suffering father figure, who sacrificed everything to take care of the OG vampires. Yadda, yadda, etc.

I've talked to others who read the books as teens and liked him a lot too and then when they re-read them as adults they were like "WHOA WHAT THE FUCK" and went from loving to hating him.

He's a character that seems to, somehow, appeal to teens, while repulsing adults. Teens and preteens also happen to be the demographic he victimizes. Like his relatationship with Armand started when Armand was really young.

I know there's an argument to be made for them all being bad, and Marius isn't any better or worse than the rest of them. In a way that's true, all the vampires commit atrocities. And if fans of Marius feel that way (because i do think he probably has some), that's fine. I'm an Armand apologist so like, I get it. We all have our problematic faves. And yeah, me loving Armand means I am biased about Marius and his crap. I know. I'm not judging anyone for liking him, though. That's not what this is about.

I just feel like there's a disconnect between what Anne Rice thought she was doing with Marius vs. what people actually see. Because a lot of people seem to hate him (except teenagers, maybe. It was certainly true 20+ years ago, but idk how todays teens feel about him) He seems almost universally loathed in a fandom full of characters that are raging dumpster fires. Why is that? Why do people have no problem loving Lestat and Armand and even Akasha, but Marius is where they draw the line.

I think it's because the narrative around him is so weird and murky. Are we supposed to love him? Hate him? Love to hate him? He makes people uncomfortable in a way that seems unpleasant rather than compelling.

And I know that you could argue, well, doesn't that make him a villain? And, I guess. But a villain isn't necessarily unlikable. In fact, the best villains are actually kind of likable. Even in the first book, when Lestat is being clearly framed as a villain, he was compelling and even likable in spite of everything. Marius just isn't, for most people.

So I want the narrative reframed in a way that feels like it is aware that he is loathsome. Because i just don't often get that feeling much from the books. And I mean, considering Daniel exists to call out everyone's crap, I assume that yeah, we will see it with Marius too one way or the other.

It's either that or make him less loathsome. But I don't really want to sympathize with him now, which is why I said my big wish for the show is for him to be fully embraced as a villain. I want to love to hate him.

But like, either way, I'll keep watching the show. I'm sure they'll do something interesting with him. I'm not going to get mad if it doesn't cater to me, personally. It's just a wish! That's all!

People out here arguing that Lestat is worse than Armand or Armand is worse than Lestat.

No, shut up, listen.

They're both trash. Let them be messy.

You know who's ACTUALLY the worst?

Marius.

I really hope the show frames him as a villain. The kind of villain who doesn't realize he's a villain because he's so full of himself he honestly thinks he's wise and noble and tragic.

But actually, who started this cycle of abuse? By grooming, turning, and then abandoning Armand to a cult for centuries? By telling Lestat to withhold information from his fledglings?

Marius, the Roman colonizer. The slave owner. The pederast.

There is so much to be mined there. Especially with the themes of race the show is exploring and with Armand being Muslim. It adds layers to Marius' playing favorites with Lestat, like choosing to seek him out and save him after ignoring Armand's plight for literal centuries.

I've seen some people speculate that since Armand is older in the show, that his trauma with Marius will be softened or abandoned somehow. But I think there's still plenty of room for Armand to have been groomed and used as a sex slave in his youth. And judging by Armand's reaction to the rent boy comment, i assume they are going to run with it somehow.

Assad looks young enough to pass for early to mid-20s, which means Armand still could have spent his teen years with Marius before being turned. There's still room for all that abandonment trauma.

But anyway that's really all I want. For the show to call Marius and his bullshit the fuck out. Repeatedly. And for it to be framed as the villainy it is.